Earth Observation for Economic Empowerment

Short description of the workshopFirst session (9:00-12:30)Marketing toolkits and creating business opportunities for Earth Observation
By Mark Noort

Earth observation has long been characterized by a technology push. This has led to a situation where earth observation solutions are successfully applied in some areas, but are underused in others. Most people are interested in what works for them and not in the technology behind the solution. Still, they want to know enough about a project or service to be able to evaluate what they are buying. Think of the example of your laptop or your car. Probably you are not completely aware of what happens inside, but you know enough about the product to make a balanced purchasing decision. With earth observation solutions this is usually not the case: people have no clue what they can expect, how reliable or expensive it is, and are therefore hesitant to adopt the new technology, even though it may be better than what they have now.

Stressing excellent technical features is important, but learning to think in terms of value for the customer and to invent ways to cross the technology chasm is crucial. That is what this workshop is about. Marketing toolkits have been developed to promote earth observation applications and to make it easier to relate to potential clients and end-users. They provide inspiration and help you avoid having to reinvent the wheel, when you prepare your promotion activities. There are basic kits for different application subjects. You can make a selection and adapt the material to your own needs.

Getting familiar with marketing toolkits is a first step, but this workshop covers not only the promotion of your product or service, but also helps you on your way to get funding for innovation and/or applied research. We will do an exercise, where you use a set of indicators for assessing the potential of your business or research proposition. This will help you to see, where the strong and weak points are and what improvements or changes are needed to obtain funding for the goal you have in mind.

The workshop will start with a presentation on, and explanation of, marketing instruments and continue with the exercise for assessing a product, service of proposal that you yourself bring to the table. After that we will evaluate the assessments in an interactive session to share our findings and learn from each other.

Second session (14:00-16:00)How to populate the GEONetCab portal
By J.C. Desconnets, Mathieu Kazmierski

The EOPOWER project is part of an international effort to promote the use of Earth Observation (EO) products and services by developing Capacity Building (CB) within EO communities including the GEOSS community. CB resources cover projects, training sessions, success stories, organizations, stakeholders, etc. that contribute to improve coordination and develop access to EO data and products. As a key tool of this initiative, the GEONetCab Portal is a web portal that allows people to create and disseminate descriptions of CB resources so as to share them and make them more visible for decision-makers.

This workshop session will aim at teaching participants how to use the different functionalities of the portal:

So as to make the experience the most profitable, it is asked to the participants to come with a CB resource of their own that they could insert into the catalogue. To help them choose one, we invite them to take a look on the resources described in the GEONetCab portal http://geonetcab.espace-dev.fr/

Short CV of the presenters

Mark Noort is the director/owner of HCP international and consultant agriculture for Geospatial Media and Communications. HCP international is a recently founded company, specialized in marketing of earth observation applications for sustainable development and general project formulation, acquisition, management and evaluation. The activities of HCP international focus on marketing and business development in the areas of agriculture, risk, water and environmental management. Previously he was head of Marketing and Project Services at the International Institute for Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation (ITC) for more than 10 years. He is also involved in several European funded projects for the worldwide promotion of earth observation applications and is co-chair of the Institutions and Development Implementation Board of the Group on Earth Observations (GEO). For more than 25 years he has managed and implemented projects in various fields, such as water management, natural resources, disaster management, agriculture, sanitation and marketing of higher education. Capacity building and fund raising are key elements in all these activities. He has vast international experience, also as an expatriate expert. He has been employed by NGO’s, companies, governments and universities. He is a graduate of Wageningen University in the Netherlands.

Jean-Christophe Desconnets is a senior researcher in geomatics at IRD (french research institute for development), with specialisation on spatial data and spatial data infrastructure in Earth Observation, environmental sciences. since 2007, he is a member of joint research unit ESPACE-DEV and leads the scientific and technic activities on interoperability of spatial data and service, spatial data infrastructure implementation.

Mathieu Kazmierski is a research engineer in Geomatics for the French Research Institute for Development (IRD). Formerly involved in the development of the French data infrastructure for biodiversity (SINP), especially to ensure its compliance with INSPIRE rules and principles, and in the NATURE-SDIplus FP7 project, he now uses his expertise on spatial data infrastructure implementation and on interoperability of spatial data and services for the French national SDI GEOSUD (GEOinformation for Sustainable Development) and for the EOPOWER project, as part of the joint research unit ESPACE-DEV.